108 research outputs found
Service Migration from Cloud to Multi-tier Fog Nodes for Multimedia Dissemination with QoE Support.
A wide range of multimedia services is expected to be offered for mobile users via various wireless access networks. Even the integration of Cloud Computing in such networks does not support an adequate Quality of Experience (QoE) in areas with high demands for multimedia contents. Fog computing has been conceptualized to facilitate the deployment of new services that cloud computing cannot provide, particularly those demanding QoE guarantees. These services are provided using fog nodes located at the network edge, which is capable of virtualizing their functions/applications. Service migration from the cloud to fog nodes can be actuated by request patterns and the timing issues. To the best of our knowledge, existing works on fog computing focus on architecture and fog node deployment issues. In this article, we describe the operational impacts and benefits associated with service migration from the cloud to multi-tier fog computing for video distribution with QoE support. Besides that, we perform the evaluation of such service migration of video services. Finally, we present potential research challenges and trends
A Transfer Learning Approach for Cache-Enabled Wireless Networks
Locally caching contents at the network edge constitutes one of the most
disruptive approaches in G wireless networks. Reaping the benefits of edge
caching hinges on solving a myriad of challenges such as how, what and when to
strategically cache contents subject to storage constraints, traffic load,
unknown spatio-temporal traffic demands and data sparsity. Motivated by this,
we propose a novel transfer learning-based caching procedure carried out at
each small cell base station. This is done by exploiting the rich contextual
information (i.e., users' content viewing history, social ties, etc.) extracted
from device-to-device (D2D) interactions, referred to as source domain. This
prior information is incorporated in the so-called target domain where the goal
is to optimally cache strategic contents at the small cells as a function of
storage, estimated content popularity, traffic load and backhaul capacity. It
is shown that the proposed approach overcomes the notorious data sparsity and
cold-start problems, yielding significant gains in terms of users'
quality-of-experience (QoE) and backhaul offloading, with gains reaching up to
in a setting consisting of four small cell base stations.Comment: some small fixes in notatio
Living on the Edge: The Role of Proactive Caching in 5G Wireless Networks
This article explores one of the key enablers of beyond G wireless
networks leveraging small cell network deployments, namely proactive caching.
Endowed with predictive capabilities and harnessing recent developments in
storage, context-awareness and social networks, peak traffic demands can be
substantially reduced by proactively serving predictable user demands, via
caching at base stations and users' devices. In order to show the effectiveness
of proactive caching, we examine two case studies which exploit the spatial and
social structure of the network, where proactive caching plays a crucial role.
Firstly, in order to alleviate backhaul congestion, we propose a mechanism
whereby files are proactively cached during off-peak demands based on file
popularity and correlations among users and files patterns. Secondly,
leveraging social networks and device-to-device (D2D) communications, we
propose a procedure that exploits the social structure of the network by
predicting the set of influential users to (proactively) cache strategic
contents and disseminate them to their social ties via D2D communications.
Exploiting this proactive caching paradigm, numerical results show that
important gains can be obtained for each case study, with backhaul savings and
a higher ratio of satisfied users of up to and , respectively.
Higher gains can be further obtained by increasing the storage capability at
the network edge.Comment: accepted for publication in IEEE Communications Magazin
Caching-Aided Collaborative D2D Operation for Predictive Data Dissemination in Industrial IoT
Industrial automation deployments constitute challenging environments where
moving IoT machines may produce high-definition video and other heavy sensor
data during surveying and inspection operations. Transporting massive contents
to the edge network infrastructure and then eventually to the remote human
operator requires reliable and high-rate radio links supported by intelligent
data caching and delivery mechanisms. In this work, we address the challenges
of contents dissemination in characteristic factory automation scenarios by
proposing to engage moving industrial machines as device-to-device (D2D)
caching helpers. With the goal to improve reliability of high-rate
millimeter-wave (mmWave) data connections, we introduce the alternative
contents dissemination modes and then construct a novel mobility-aware
methodology that helps develop predictive mode selection strategies based on
the anticipated radio link conditions. We also conduct a thorough system-level
evaluation of representative data dissemination strategies to confirm the
benefits of predictive solutions that employ D2D-enabled collaborative caching
at the wireless edge to lower contents delivery latency and improve data
acquisition reliability
Cooperative Multi-Bitrate Video Caching and Transcoding in Multicarrier NOMA-Assisted Heterogeneous Virtualized MEC Networks
Cooperative video caching and transcoding in mobile edge computing (MEC)
networks is a new paradigm for future wireless networks, e.g., 5G and 5G
beyond, to reduce scarce and expensive backhaul resource usage by prefetching
video files within radio access networks (RANs). Integration of this technique
with other advent technologies, such as wireless network virtualization and
multicarrier non-orthogonal multiple access (MC-NOMA), provides more flexible
video delivery opportunities, which leads to enhancements both for the
network's revenue and for the end-users' service experience. In this regard, we
propose a two-phase RAF for a parallel cooperative joint multi-bitrate video
caching and transcoding in heterogeneous virtualized MEC networks. In the cache
placement phase, we propose novel proactive delivery-aware cache placement
strategies (DACPSs) by jointly allocating physical and radio resources based on
network stochastic information to exploit flexible delivery opportunities.
Then, for the delivery phase, we propose a delivery policy based on the user
requests and network channel conditions. The optimization problems
corresponding to both phases aim to maximize the total revenue of network
slices, i.e., virtual networks. Both problems are non-convex and suffer from
high-computational complexities. For each phase, we show how the problem can be
solved efficiently. We also propose a low-complexity RAF in which the
complexity of the delivery algorithm is significantly reduced. A Delivery-aware
cache refreshment strategy (DACRS) in the delivery phase is also proposed to
tackle the dynamically changes of network stochastic information. Extensive
numerical assessments demonstrate a performance improvement of up to 30% for
our proposed DACPSs and DACRS over traditional approaches.Comment: 53 pages, 24 figure
A Survey on Mobile Edge Computing for Video Streaming : Opportunities and Challenges
5G communication brings substantial improvements in the quality of service provided to various applications by achieving higher throughput and lower latency. However, interactive multimedia applications (e.g., ultra high definition video conferencing, 3D and multiview video streaming, crowd-sourced video streaming, cloud gaming, virtual and augmented reality) are becoming more ambitious with high volume and low latency video streams putting strict demands on the already congested networks. Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) is an emerging paradigm that extends cloud computing capabilities to the edge of the network i.e., at the base station level. To meet the latency requirements and avoid the end-to-end communication with remote cloud data centers, MEC allows to store and process video content (e.g., caching, transcoding, pre-processing) at the base stations. Both video on demand and live video streaming can utilize MEC to improve existing services and develop novel use cases, such as video analytics, and targeted advertisements. MEC is expected to reshape the future of video streaming by providing ultra-reliable and low latency streaming (e.g., in augmented reality, virtual reality, and autonomous vehicles), pervasive computing (e.g., in real-time video analytics), and blockchain-enabled architecture for secure live streaming. This paper presents a comprehensive survey of recent developments in MEC-enabled video streaming bringing unprecedented improvement to enable novel use cases. A detailed review of the state-of-the-art is presented covering novel caching schemes, optimal computation offloading, cooperative caching and offloading and the use of artificial intelligence (i.e., machine learning, deep learning, and reinforcement learning) in MEC-assisted video streaming services.publishedVersionPeer reviewe
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Improving Resilience of Communication in Information Dissemination for Time-Critical Applications
Severe weather impacts life and in this dire condition, people rely on communication, to organize relief and stay in touch with their loved ones. In such situations, cellular network infrastructure\footnote{We refer to cellular network infrastructure as infrastructure for the entirety of this document} might be affected due to power outage, link failures, etc. This urges us to look at Ad-hoc mode of communication, to offload major traffic partially or fully from the infrastructure, depending on the status of it.
We look into threefold approach, ranging from the case where the infrastructure is completely unavailable, to where it has been replaced by make shift low capacity mobile cellular base station.
First, we look into communication without infrastructure and timely, dissemination of weather alerts specific to geographical areas. We look into the specific case of floods as they affect significant number of people. Due to the nature of the problem we can utilize the properties of Information Centric Networking (ICN) in this context, namely: i) Flexibility and high failure resistance: Any node in the network that has the information can satisfy the query ii) Robust: Only sensor and car need to communicate iii) Fine grained geo-location specific information dissemination. We analyze how message forwarding using ICN on top of Ad hoc network, approach compares to the one based on infrastructure, that is less resilient in the case of disaster. In addition, we compare the performance of different message forwarding strategies in VANETs (Vehicular Adhoc Networks) using ICN. Our results show that ICN strategy outperforms the infrastructure-based approach as it is 100 times faster for 63\% of total messages delivered.
Then we look into the case where we have the cellular network infrastructure, but it is being pressured due to rapid increase in volume of network traffic (as seen during a major event) or it has been replaced by low capacity mobile tower. In this case we look at offloading as much traffic as possible from the infrastructure to device-to-device communication. However, the host-oriented model of the TCP/IP-based Internet poses challenges to this communication pattern. A scheme that uses an ICN model to fetch content from nearby peers, increases the resiliency of the network in cases of outages and disasters. We collected content popularity statistics from social media to create a content request pattern and evaluate our approach through the simulation of realistic urban scenarios. Additionally, we analyze the scenario of large crowds in sports venues. Our simulation results show that we can offload traffic from the backhaul network by up to 51.7\%, suggesting an advantageous path to support the surge in traffic while keeping complexity and cost for the network operator at manageable levels.
Finally, we look at adaptive bit-rate streaming (ABR) streaming, which has contributed significantly to the reduction of video playout stalling, mainly in highly variable bandwidth conditions. ABR clients continue to suffer from the variation of bit rate qualities over the duration of a streaming session. Similar to stalling, these variations in bit rate quality have a negative impact on the users’ Quality of Experience (QoE). We use a trace from a large-scale CDN to show that such quality changes occur in a significant amount of streaming sessions and investigate an ABR video segment retransmission approach to reduce the number of such quality changes. As the new HTTP/2 standard is becoming increasingly popular, we also see an increase in the usage of HTTP/2 as an alternative protocol for the transmission of web traffic including video streaming. Using various network conditions, we conduct a systematic comparison of existing transport layer approaches for HTTP/2 that is best suited for ABR segment retransmissions. Since it is well known that both protocols provide a series of improvements over HTTP/1.1, we perform experiments both in controlled environments and over transcontinental links in the Internet and find that these benefits also “trickle up” into the application layer when it comes to ABR video streaming where HTTP/2 retransmissions can significantly improve the average quality bitrate while simultaneously minimizing bit rate variations over the duration of a streaming session. Taking inspiration from the first two approaches, we take into account the resiliency of a multi-path approach and further look at a multi-path and multi-stream approach to ABR streaming and demonstrate that losses on one path have very little impact on the other from the same multi-path connection and this increases throughput and resiliency of communication
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